The Framework – For a Better Monday

The For A Better Monday Approach

It has now been over two years (as of May 2018) that I’ve started this adventure. It ended up changing my life for the best and making me, I believe a healthier, happier and more productive person. During this period I feel like I have learned a great deal from the practices I have embraced and the mistakes I have made. I can easily say that I feel a thousand times better today than two years ago. And this, on physical, mental, and spiritual levels. In addition to reaping the obvious benefits related to well being, I believe that my personal approach and commitment led to a situation where a particular way of applying certain practices to my everyday life emerged on its own. I decided to call this self-emerged way of doing things: The For A Better Monday Framework.

As I was being involved in this journey, I got into the habit of observing and thinking a lot about what I was going through, and put my experience in writing as often as possible. Now that I have acknowledged the emergence of this framework and defined it as such, I think it’s time to share it with others. The framework could act as an initiator and facilitator to apply the practices described on this blog to real life. I personally don’t believe in formulas, special diet programs, and similar approaches which often promises quick fixes, and are supposed to work for everyone. This is why I developed my own approach to initiate and sustain change in my life. Although I did invest a lot of time and energy into this project, it never felt like a burden or something difficult that I had to do. In addition, despite all the challenging moments, I’ve been having a lot of fun pursuing the adventure. In this write-up, I am going to describe to the best of my abilities this self-emerged framework. I believe it to be fairly simple, sustainable, and most importantly adaptable to anyone’s own reality. I would like to believe that since this way of doing things led to great results for myself, it could also work for other individuals interested in embracing a positive change in their lives.

No Pressure

I think one of the most important differentiation I was able to make early on, was that being committed does not necessarily mean pressuring myself. Therefore, I never got into the mindset of setting concrete goals with this project, but rather acknowledge the fact that I was going to be committed and persistent to go towards a certain direction I had chosen, and this for the long run. If something did not work the very first time, well, I was fine with the idea to give it a try once again at a different time later on. I also got into the mentality that every step that moves towards a healthier lifestyle is a victory on its own.

As an imaginary example to illustrate my thoughts on this, let say a person is drinking 25 cups a coffee a week, and the same person is able to reduce her coffee consumption to 20 or 21. That’s already a success in my book. In the case that the same person can only sustain having 20 cups of coffee per week for a three week period, and she’s then back to consuming 25 as she used to, I personally won’t see this as a failure, but rather as a gained experience on which the person can start building on. With the will and the agenda to move towards the right direction, I believe it to be possible.

All this to show that I think that it is very important that the actual project for change is not adding some negative stress to our lives. As long as we are in for the long run and we know towards what direction we are heading, I don’t see going back and forth as a failure, but rather as a different way of advancing. We should never be comparing ourselves to others, or any established norms. The only comparison I allow myself to do is with regards to my own past. I do this in order to better asses my progress. I am in the mentality that every element that I consider a positive one which enters my life is an additional gain, and going sometimes backwards is also a sort of gain in terms of gained experience. Therefore I believe that with this approach we never lose.

Learning How to Listen to Our Body

This is probably one of the most important components of this framework. Actually listening to my body and acting according to what my body is trying to communicate to me, is what made this journey a success so far, and allowed this framework to emerge on its own. Knowing how to listen to our body and act accordingly is the total opposite of following a formula. The key point here is to be able to differentiate cravings generated by addictions, from what the body really wants. To understand that when we feel hungry, in most cases it has nothing to do with real hunger. The same goes with thirst. I believe that by making us eat three times a day, the modern society turned us into food junkies. For someone who is eating 21 meals a week, I think the word withdrawals is more appropriate than the words of hunger or thirst to describe the actual feeling.

Listening to our body goes way beyond food of course. One of the key points in my opinion is to know when to rest, and when to work. I personally have been embracing intermittent fasting on a daily basis, and I perform most of my physical and intellectual work on an empty stomach. I’ve also noticed that I am capitalizing on my efforts the most when I either completely rest, or I am deeply involved with an activity. I have noticed that what tires me the most is the in between moments, when I am kind of relaxed but still doing an activity that is still tiring for my body such as watching an irrelevant video on YouTube.

Planting The Seeds For Change

On this blog ,there is a section called starting points with a list of more than 15 practices to incorporate into our lives to make the major change possible. I also like to call them seeds for change, because this way of referring to them communicates the idea of a new start, but also the idea that the seed could grow into something bigger or not. Metaphorically speaking, how many seeds we want to plant, how much we want to water them, and expose the emerging sprouts to the sun, are all up to the person who wants to initiate change in her life. This framework adopts an extremely flexible approach, even more so when it comes to managing the seeds for change. The seed analogy in my views also works with the idea of the potential as well. We could imagine that we plant what first appears to be the right seed, but maybe we happen to plant it at the wrong time with regards to our own context. Some seeds could grow into elements that will change our lives and others won’t do much on a specific moment in time.

One very important point to keep in mind is that the different seeds for change tend to interact with each other, in the sense that some progress made in one area will most likely influence other areas in a positive way. If we go back to the imaginary example of the person who planted the seed of reducing her coffee consumption, and lets say that along with trying to reduce her coffee consumption, she has also planted the seed of making and drinking slow pressed juices. We can then imagine that the progress she’ll be making in remineralizing her body with freshly squeezed juices, could play a positive role when she’s going to give it a new try to reduce her coffee consumption. This is why I believe that it is extremely important to not underestimate this multidimensional aspect and interactivity of the seeds for change between each other. All these starting points ultimately have the same purpose of making us healthier, happier, and more productive people.

No Prohibition

Although some of the seeds for change require some discipline to get initiated, since the beginning of my journey I never was in the mindset of forbidding anything to myself. The idea here is not to restrict, but present something different to our body for a certain amount of time, in order for it to know that a different reality exists. If we are in the process of experimenting with dry-fasting for the very first time, and we can only dry-fast for a couple of hours in addition to the hours when we are asleep, this is absolutely fine. It’s actually a great start and I would personally consider this a very successful first step. Maybe next time we’ll go for three hours, then four and so on…

If we are eating meat on a daily basis and decide to go several days without it, and at the end of a certain period of time, lets say three days, we crave meat. I don’t see any problem to go ahead and have some. And most importantly we should enjoy it as much as possible, as opposed to feeling guilty. The success factor here relies in the fact that during three days we were able to present something different to our body. And now something could be built on this experience to go further in what I personally consider to be the right direction. A few days or weeks later we’ll give it an other try, and maybe this time we’ll be able to go five days without eating meat. The main idea here is to never feel guilty and never feel like we have failed. Because we know that we are in for the long run. We know deep inside, in what direction we are heading, and we know that it is not going to be a linear process. We are here to heal our bodies and have fun in the process. What first could be perceived as backward steps are also part of having fun. Going ahead and re-experiencing something we used to consume on a regular basis has its own appeal in terms of giving us certain pleasure. It is also during moments like these, that I often have been learning the most on this journey, when realizing that my perception of something that I was consuming on a regular basis had changed due to the fact that I had stayed away from it for a while.

No Dogma

This framework has for goal to stay away from a dogmatic approach and strict rules. The rules, if there are any are flexible and we are the ones setting them if we think they are going to be helpful to get more out of an actual starting point. People often ask me if I am a vegan, a vegetarian, or if I only eat raw. It has been very difficult for me to give a one word answer to these types of questions, because for someone who has adopted the For A Better Monday Framework, I don’t identify myself with any of these approaches, but at the same time ,I embrace them all at different moments on my journey. With this framework ,it’s up to the individual to set her baseline. I also believe that one of the greatest gifts this journey offers is to find ourselves and redefine constantly our baseline. This is why, I rather not lock myself into a box. This journey is for me more about making progress towards a healthier living than defining an identity. This does not mean that a person who has embraced veganism or vegetarianism could not use it. On the contrary, individuals with such lifestyles may even have a head start on many levels already. I believe this framework to be extremely inclusive and compatible with any type of lifestyle.

Various Rings in Flexibility

In the previous paragraph, I was mentioning the idea of defining a baseline. Since I’ve started this journey my baseline has been changing as I’ve been pursuing the adventure of listening to my body and acting accordingly. To Illustrate how I go about my baseline I came up with ring system made of full circles. The rings are located one inside the other, meaning that the very first ring is placed inside the second one, and the ring number one and two are placed into the third one etc… As we move towards the outside, the rings become more flexible in nature.

At the very center I have my first ring. This is the most rigid one. Inside of it, I place habits and products that I believe I have quit for good, and things I know I will probably never touch. In my first ring at the current moment I have: alcohol, coffee, recreational drugs, nicotine, doing work that I really do not enjoy doing, being exposed to ultra toxic people, margarine, ultra processed food etc..
In my second ring I have things that I don’t want them to be a part of my life anymore but under certain circumstances, I could make an exception. Those elements are currently for the most part: medicinal drugs, dairy products, and processed food. I don’t buy or consume any medicinal drugs anymore, but I also know that if one day I am in an emergency situation or if I need to go through a tooth surgery, I will most likely choose to use some. As far as my everyday life goes, they are out of the window. I believe that they do more harm than good to me. For the case of dairy products, I think that they are not good for me either. That said, if there is a dish that I really enjoy which has little bit of cheese or yogurt, I can on certain occasions be flexible and consume some. And lastly with processed food, I try to stay away from them as much as possible. If something is sold in container or in a packaging it’s already a bad sign in my views. I tend to get extremely proud of myself on weeks where all the trash I produce is made of organic matter.
My third ring contains elements and activities that I consume or do occasionally, but as the time is passing by, I’ve been noticing that they are less and less present in my life. Those are pretty much all meats, and products of animal origin. I still do not have a problem with consuming meat, but as I am writing this it has been over two months that I had not consumed any. And when I look back at the period before starting this journey, I can easily say that I have reduced my consumption of all types of meats by at least 90%. Along with meat products, I can also put chocolate, processed sugar, bread, and cereals in this third circle. I am even a bit more flexible with cereals such as corn and rice which I could actually put in a fourth ring.

With this ring system as we go towards the outside the flexibility of the actual ring increases. As I’ve been moving forward with regards to time, with this adventure, I’ve been displacing certain elements from one ring to the next. If I take the example of coffee. It went from being a heavy addiction of mine, to become something I would consume once or twice a week, it then made it’s way to the third, the second, and the first circle in my personal ring system. Today I believe that I am done with coffee for good.

This system is a tool that can help defining our baseline and monitor our progress as to what we put inside of our body or not at this very moment in time.

Planning, and Taking a Vacation Once in a While

As I’ve been progressing through this journey, listening to my body has been helping me to design the week or weeks ahead of me in terms of diet. There are weeks, I will eat only eat raw plant based. Others during which I will have a vegetarian approach. There will be weeks when I will be dry-fasting the half of it. Once we get into the habit of listening to out body and be able to decipher what it is telling us to do, this planning activity becomes a sort of a second nature. I also would like to mention that there are weeks, or consecutive days when I take a total break from thinking about what I am eating. I allow myself any type of food, except for everything that is inside my first circle in my ring system I mentioned earlier. I usually do it when I visit a new city. This makes it easier to come back to my general approach once the trip is over.

Recap on how the framework and how it could be easily used

So far the way I described this framework has been mostly conceptual. Although there is no formula here, there’s an approach and a way of doing things. In this section I am going to provide a more concise and procedural guide to how one could get started with this framework.

Before doing anything, I believe it is important to try to asses where we are in life at this current moment, and where we ideally would like to be. Then ask ourselves the question of: What is keeping us from getting where we’d like to be, and if feeling way better physically, mentally, and spiritually will help us to get where we’d like to be? If the answer is yes, this framework could act as the master tool which would allow us to move towards what I consider to be the right direction.

An other situation could be that we are currently experiencing health issues. If that is the case and if we have already tried to solution them with modern medicine or other approaches, then a valid question to ask would be: Did everything we’ve tried so far helped solving our health issues? If nothing has worked so far, especially solutions provided by modern western medicine, then the For A Better Monday approach could be an alternative. I am only basing this thought on my own experience which happened to have very little success with modern medicine to solve health related issues. Since I’ve been embracing change with the For A Better Monday journey, all my little health problems started to disappear one by one. I would like to make it clear that For A Better Monday is absolutely not a vendetta against modern medicine. For purely mechanical issues, and emergencies, I think that modern medicine is outstanding, and I would have no problem using it to remove a mole from my skin, or cast a broken bone etc. For everything related to to the biochemistry of the body, and the ability of the body to repair and heal itself, I’ve personally chosen to stay away from modern western medicine as much as possible.

Once we have decided that we want to make the change happen, we can start experimenting with one or two starting points which are the most appealing to us. The ones we think that would benefit us the most in our current situation. This is the moment when little bit discipline is needed. Depending on our situation and what starting point we have chosen, some resistance from our body and eventually negative symptoms could appear. Depending on the current toxicity of our body, some of the starting points such as dry-fasting could be very challenging at first. This is why I suggest to embrace the starting points slowly, and gradually increase the use such practices. Experiencing negative symptoms at first, does not mean in my opinion that what is happening is actually bad for us. As with any change, the body needs time to adapt to the new reality.

Once we have integrated one or two starting points into our lifestyles, we can then act on two different levels. We can increase the intensity of the practices we have going on and/or add an additional starting point and let that new seed for change do its work.

As to what to do next and how to do slight adjustments, we need to be constantly listening to our body. It’s actually the body which is our real guide and not this framework. It is absolutely possible that a different frameworks than the one I am presenting here emerge on their own from the experiences of other individuals. I personally think that as with any change, the most challenging part is to get started. Once we are able to get started and are aware of certain principles to make the right decisions at the right time, the journey towards a better Monday starts unfolding on its own.

My Mistakes

In this section, I would like to share some of the mistakes I have made during this journey. I am in a way grateful that I have made these mistakes, because I think I have learned a great deal from them. That said, if my experience could make it so that others can avoid to make the same mistakes, then this could save some valuable time and allow them to get concrete results faster from the actual journey.

My first big mistake was that I initiated change in a very radical manner. I planted way too many seeds for change at the same time. I went 95% raw, quit dairy products, quit cereals all together, quit alcohol, all at the same time. I also started to exercise intensely and swim in lake Geneva all year around. I think all of those elements were positive ones for me, but to initiate everything at the same time, with an almost exhausted body was definitely a mistake. If I would do it again today, I would plant the seeds for change one by one, and add new practices as I am making progress with the first ones.
My second big mistake was to increase my consumption of nuts by going all raw. Indeed, when I stopped eating cooked food, a sensation of feeling empty started to appear, and I naturally compensated with nuts. It took me over a year and half to realize that this was a mistake as far as I was concerned. I think that consuming nuts in big quantities tend to slowdown my entire system.
My third big mistake: Once I started to eat more raw, I started to prepare salads with a ton of ingredients in it. This was a big mistake of mine as well. Today I tend to make salads which are way simpler with three to four ingredients max. I don’t add any lemon juice or olive oil anymore. I have learned to appreciate raw food for its own natural taste. I also like to have mono meals once in a while. Similar to fasting, eating simple, raw, easy to digest food, tend to give a break to entire digestive system. I then feel that the saved energy in these areas is being used by the body to repair and heal itself.
My fourth big mistake was to not allow enough time to recuperate after a long dry-fasting period. This happened after my nine day dry-fast. I scheduled my dry-fast so I could be on my own terms during the nine days of not eating or drinking anything, but I did not think about the period that was going to follow the dry-fasting period. During the fasting period I was able to do my activities pretty much as usual, therefore I did not perceived any problem at fulfilling my commitments right after breaking my fast. This was a big mistake. I had a very difficult time to jump back into a stressful urban life once I started to nourish my body with food coming from the outside again. If you want to read more about the actual experience here’s the link to the actual journal post.
My fifth big mistake was to focus more on working out than stretching out. When I first initiated change in my life style. Today my approach is quite the opposite. I still work out, but moderately, and do intense cardio exercises for very short time periods. For the major portion of my physical activity I do focus more on stretching out my body with yoga, do meditation and breathing exercises. For the past five months or so, since I’ve been feeling more energetic, I did increase the intensity of my workouts. This situation also thought me that, it is probably better to focus on milder way of exercising, at the beginning of the journey assuming that the body may be near exhaustion, and as we start to feel more energized increase the intensity of the workouts, but still focus greatly on activities such as yoga, breathing, and stretching out.

My Breakthrough Moments

Each time after returning from a dry-fasting period, I feel like I have made some progress. I feel like I am a stronger and healthier being. This goes with my short 40 hour weekly dry-fasting periods as well as with the longer ones that I would do once in a while when my body asks for it. After fully recuperating from my nine day dry-fast, I felt like I had reached a new level of well being. Earlier in time I had a period when I was fasting three to four days a week. This series of intense dry-fasting sessions made me move forward, especially on an emotional level. I was able to overcome an important number of unresolved psychological matter. Since then I feel way more centered, and in peace with myself. Out of all the starting points, I find dry-fasting to be probably the most spectacular one. I have the feeling that it acts on so many different levels. This is why I consider dry-fasting as one of my majors tools to make this journey possible.
When I first found out about kidney filtration and started to monitor my urine, my kidneys were not filtering at all. When they finally started to filter it was a crucial turning point for me on this journey. Kidney filtration still remains quite mysterious to me, but throughout this entire blog you can have access to all the information I was able to gather with my own experience.
During summer time of 2018 (here in southern hemisphere) I went all raw twice for a period of three weeks each. Along with going raw, I was also dry-fasting on Sundays. During that period I would sleep long hours, to the point where I started wondering if there was something wrong with me. At the end of the two, three weeks of eating all raw, I started to feel like I had gone to the next level of well-being. Since then I have been feeling extremely good and productive. As I am writing this it has been five months that I have sustained energy and I’ve been extremely productive without feeling tired. My morale has been up, and I have been enjoying life more than ever. I believe that during that summer 2018 (in the southern hemisphere) something happened inside of my body to allow me to the next level of well-being. If you want to read more in detail about my experience, here’s the link to the corresponding journal entry.
I reduced my consumption of nuts by 99%. This was a big breakthrough moment for me. As soon as I reduced considerably my consumption of nuts, my energy levels skyrocketed.
Along the same lines, I quit putting olive oil in my salads. I always thought olive oil was good for me. Since I don’t use any at home for food, I’ve been feeling better. I use olive oil for cleaning my teeth by doing what is called oil pulling.
Doing salt flushes. This is also a key moment on my journey. When I first started to do salt flushes, it literally transformed the way I was feeling. I think that I was doing a good job at detoxing my body with dry-fasting, and mostly eating raw/plant based whole food, but maybe not so much at getting the toxins out of my body. In that sense, I believe that salt flushes have been extremely helpful.
Being less of a bourgeois is probably more of a general consequence of the change that a breakthrough moment, but realizing it was so liberating that I wanted to list it here. For the past twelve months or so I believe that I have dry-fasted a total of three months out of the twelve. This situation along with having a more simple diet made mostly of raw/plant based and whole foods ended up being a huge money saver. In addition, I was able to quit the use of pretty much all cosmetics. Feel free to check out my post on how I quit using shampoo. Spending less money allows me to make time for my biggest passion which is to make music, to learn new skills so can be a better professional, and allows me to have time to write on my various blogs and journals.
Living in South America also made me live in a more humble way. I only buy clothes or any type of equipment when it’s an absolute necessity. When I add all these factors together I realize that my cost of living has been reduced drastically since I have started this journey. And the most beautiful part, is that I have the feeling to be way more productive, healthier, and happier with less. Living the way I am living today also makes me feel more prepared to be able to live with even less than what I have access to today. With only a few hours of preparation I can be ready to hit the road with my back pack if I needed to. I also know that I can live without food or water for nine days straight. This situation gives me so much confidence to face life’s uncertainties. It’s a more comforting feeling than having any sort of insurance.

My Conclusion for Now

As a final and more general observation, since I have started this journey, I have the feeling that everything with regards to my health and the way I feel has been constantly improving. It’s an amazing feeling, as if the time passes by, I am rejuvenating, and doing more the things I love to do in life. For these feelings alone, I think that embracing change two years ago (as of May 2018) was probably the best decision I have taken in life. I hope my experience and this framework can help you in similar or in better ways.

I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I would like to make it very clear that I am only sharing my own experience on this website, and have no intention to give any specific advice on health. Please read the disclaimer section for more information.